The best storytellers invariably are those who are delighted by the stories they’re telling.

Pity the background character. You know: the old guy sitting in a doorway in Cairo looking on as Indiana Jones walks by. Or the overworked bartender who hands Luke Skywalker a drink, never realizing what the fates (or the Force) have in store for the hayseed-looking kid. 

The endeavor to create art, especially a fine art that requires great dedication and technical skill to master, is to be commended. Likewise, an organization dedicated to the development of those artists and opportunities for them to perform that art, especially in a new way, is a gift to its community.

The Detroit Public Theatre is coming to West Michigan with an award-winning drama.

An innovative, inspiring film festival is back again at Saugatuck Center for the Arts, but with a new approach.

In the five years since James Sofranko became Artistic Director of Grand Rapids Ballet, the company has shown their extraordinary versatility both within and beyond the realm of classical ballet.

Fifty five years ago, DCTV, located in Dale City, Virginia, was the site of an experiment, or an act of faith. Airtime was given over to local residents, who, free of commercial concerns, could create content that would speak directly to other members of the community.  

The title of Nathan Alan Davis’s 2014 play “Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea” suggests its poetry, and the current production in Kalamazoo at Western Michigan University, in collaboration with Face Off Theatre Company, fully brings to fruition the promise of this gorgeous and uniquely African-American story as an embodied lyric poem.

The conceit of Lauren Yee’s 2018 play The Great Leap, currently in production at Farmers Alley Theatre in Kalamazoo, is brilliant. Part fiction, part global history, part autobiography, it speaks to uniquely immigrant experiences through four characters and an imagined set of circumstances amid a very real, vivid historic moment.

A community of Ugandans giving God the middle finger in a most exuberant and tuneful way in response to the poverty and AIDS that has befallen them is but one of many surprisingly delightful numbers in the musical The Book of Mormon.